Facebook: One of the Biggest Bartering Companies in the World.

Most of us barter every day, and we don’t even realise it. Whether it’s the little things like trading skills around the office, trading your goods/ services with other businesses for benefits or perhaps you’ve just been socialising on the internet?

You’re probably wondering, “how am I bartering when I’m just socialising on the internet?!”

Well, you don’t even need to be socialising to be bartering. Whilst you browse the internet and put your information into online profiles or even when you’re online shopping you are bartering in some way.

So what are we actually bartering?

Whilst we use the internet, search engines are collecting information about our searching behaviours and the kind of things we look at. In return for our data, they are letting us use the services for free.

Facebook is a big culprit for this because of the excessive high volume of data they collect.

In return for letting us use their social network for free, Facebook collects all your personal information, photographs, private conversations and behaviours and collate it to use however they wish.

Remember all those Terms & Conditions you skipped over for so long?

If you had read those conditions (it may have taken you over a week) you might not have clicked that sign up button at all.

In those pages and pages of terms and conditions, we are technically signing our own bartering agreement with Facebook. An agreement in which states that they collect data on everything we do and that nothing is private not even our deleted posts/ unposted status’.

This agreement also stated that by signing up you agree to give Facebook the power to sell your information to brands and companies ‘without any compensation to you’.Is it worth it?

Now that the laws have changed and the new GDPR (General Data Protection Regulation) law is in place, Facebook has sent out new terms of agreement and has given them to us in a way that urges us to skip through and accept without making changes to our profile.

The GDPR law states the aim to give citizen and residents more control over their personal data, but its main idea is to stop businesses like Facebook from sharing this with other companies.

Some of the new Terms and Conditions include the request to use facial recognition across your data and also tells you exactly how it plans to use your data, but it doesn’t give the option to opt out.

Still want Facebook? Changed your mind? Unfortunately, the contract is binding and even closing down your account won’t remove some of the information they have!